After bingeing all of Stranger Things Season 3, fans have been on the lookout for any tiny clues or easter eggs that may help explain that cliffhanger ending. It turns out, that careful searching may not have been in vain, because the Stranger Things team really did drop a hidden message into the new season that may confirm the biggest fan theory about Season 4. Murray’s phone number in Stranger Things may provide the answer to the questions that every fan has been asking since finished the recent season.

Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from throughout Stranger Things Season 3. In the new season, Joyce Byers and Jim Hopper team up with conspiracy theorist Murray Bauman, whom it turns out was actually right about a covert Russian invasion in Hawkins all along. During their efforts to infiltrate the Russian base, Joyce sets Murray off by revealing his phone number: (618) 625-8313. Now, as fans of twisty sci-fi movies and TV shows probably well know, when a non-555 phone number is mentioned, it could very well be an easter egg just waiting for fans to dial up and discover. Fans get an even more explicit clue of the numbers importance when Murray actor Brett Gelman posted a photo of the phone number on his Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BzqyqrwB325/

So, what happens when you call the number? Callers are met with a recording of Brett Gelman as Murray Bauman, saying that this is Bauman’s answering machine. Most of the message is just a fun little easter egg, but there is one segment that seems to be very important to the actual plot of Stranger Things. Murray tells Joyce that he has an update for her that is neither good or bad:

Anyone who has watched through the whole season will probably immediately assume this "update" is about Jim Hopper’s whereabouts, and it sounds like it could be confirmation that Hopper is actually still alive. After all, telling Joyce that Hopper is not dead but he is trapped in a secret Russian prison definitely sounds like a not fully good or bad piece of news.

David Harbour even seemed to confirm this phone message was about his character, too. After the season aired, Harbour changed his Instagram profile picture to various numbers over the course of several days, and fans were able to piece together that Harbour was spelling out Murray’s phone number.

The phone message seems to confirm the predominant fan theory that Hopper survived the lab explosion in the Season 3 finale and is now being held in a Russian prison. The main theory as to what happened to save Hopper’s life and also send him to Russia is that the sheriff likely jumped into the closing gate to the Upside Down at the last minute and eventually found an exit from the alternate dimension in the Russian testing facility.

While this phone easter egg does sound a lot like confirmation of the Hopper theory, nothing is officially confirmed yet… including a fourth season of Stranger Things. Although it feels inevitable that Netflix will renew the sci-fi hit for at least one more season, fans will have to keep waiting to get the official word on if there will be more episodes or not.

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